Nuclear Fiction

Evangelical Christians from around the world paraded in Jerusalem, Thursday, in support of Israel. This from US Rep. Trent Franks, “It breaks my heart to see the president of the United States reserve more criticism for Israel for building homes in their capital city than he does for [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad for building nuclear weapons with which to threaten the peace and security of the entire free world.”

As someone (Tom Wright?) remarked in a different context, there are nearly as many problems with that sentence as there are words.

Iranians, from a civilization thousands of years older than ours, are not mad.They, unlike Israel, have signed the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. By every account, (Israeli & US intelligence agencies and UN), Iran stopped its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and there is no evidence it has re-started it. Ahmadinejad may be mad but he is not Iran. At best estimates, starting now, it would take them 3 to 5 years to produce sufficient fissile material to make 3 warheads.

Israel Possesses more than 200 nuclear warheads with the means to deliver them and is protected by the best defence systems American money can buy. So, why do they maintain the ficttion that Iran is ‘an existential threat’? Just suppose Iran were foolish enough to launch a nuclear attack, what would be the target? Jerusalem, Islams third most holy site, with Palestinian Bethlehem just 6 miles away; Tel Aviv, with Qalqiliya barely 16 miles to the East; or Haifa with a significant Palestinian population close by?

And what might be the outcome? No ‘might’ about it; the resultant carnage on Iran’s cities by Israel & America would send much of the region back into the ‘dark ages’. Iran is little threat to Israel whose real danger comes from within. And Jews worldwide are not being helped by people who call themselves ‘evangelical christians’ but whose language and behaviour fits uncomfortably with the Jesus of the Gospels.

And why, btw, does America’s interests in the Middle East trump those of the people who live there. We used to call that colonialism, imperialism; sensible people still do.